


Obvious

by Dominatrix



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post-Reichenbach, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-05
Updated: 2013-10-13
Packaged: 2017-12-17 18:58:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/870908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dominatrix/pseuds/Dominatrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock and Irene have dinner.<br/>She hides something from him.<br/>Will Sherlock be able to deduce her though it has to do with feelings?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Sherlock. I'm surprised that you came."

"I announced that I would come. So it's obvious to assume that I would really show up, what I did. Far more improbable would be the suggestion that I wouldn't come."

"Perhaps we should just go in."

Luckily Sherlock was today not as much Sherlock as he was usually, which was good. Otherwise the waiter who wanted to guide them to their table probably would have started to cry like a little girl. Irene smiled and looked at Sherlock while he took off his coat and sat down opposite her, still an angered expression in his bright eyes.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"It can't be nothing, if..."

"Sherlock" she cut him off softly and put a hand on his arm. His eyes narrowed a bit as he watched how her blood-red painted fingernails slowly scratched over the fabric of his dark shirt.

"What use does this have?"

"Distracting you. You're so horribly un-relaxed."

"The last time I was more or less relaxed you hit me with a riding crop, if I remember correctly."

"Oh yes" she said and smiled because of the memory.

"Why did you even order me here?"

"Order? My goodness, Sherlock. You talk as if I had forced you. And it was you who asked me."

"It was impossible for the talk to lead in a different direction. I had to ask." "Couldn't you simply say that you asked because you cared a bit for me? Couldn't you simply lie?"

"I do care about you" he contradicted immediately. "As least in a range I can accept."

"Of course."

"If I wouldn't care about you I wouldn't have prevented your execution." He spoke lowly, because although several months had passed since her _death_ , the chance was still there that someone recognized her. "The blonde suits you, by the way."

"Thanks" she replied and brushed a streak of her hair behind her ear. "Although brown suited you better. But nothing can really deface you." She was speechless, at least for a short moment, before she voiced a thought that she had since their first meeting.

"Can you read in me now, Mr. Holmes?"

"Read?"

"Saying things about me that nobody apart from me could know. The last time you obviously weren't successful." He leaned back, put his hands together and leaned his fingertips against the tip of his nose. Irene knew that this was his typical movement when he thought, when he observed. Because that was what he did. Strangely she felt far more naked now than at their first meeting. Back then she had guessed how good he was, but now she knew it for sure. Today he would know her. When Sherlock took a deep breath she made herself ready.

"There is little, much less than with other people. You are still the woman you were when we met for the first time, but now you're letting your shields down. You have trust that no one will find you here because everybody thinks you're dead. You're not as careful as you were. One could interpret this attitude as a tendency towards self-destruction, if I wouldn't know you. Your lipstick is a little smudged, so you applied it with great haste, without finding the time to clean up the tiny sport below the left corner of your mouth. When you brushed your hair back your hands were trembling. Still the fact that you're in public alarms you, to the extent that you were finishing your water off the reel when we had just arrived. You're careful, Miss Adler, because you remember how well I remember the words of the person opposite me. That is why you mostly stay quiet. But when you talk it becomes clear which persons influenced you the most lately. It is obvious."

"Oh really?" she cut him off lowly, but he only glanced at her shortly before he continued.

"You have adapted the way of talking of someone else. You have repeated your talk with him or her in your head, until you had copied every intonation, every way to speak out the word, in a perfect way. You have to have a considerable sympathy for this person if your talks have stayed in your mind so clearly." He looked at her waiting, and although his face showed no expression, his eyes sparkled. He enjoyed noticing these little things.

"Sherlock, I'm sorry to tell you this. But you're wrong."


	2. Chapter 2

His facial expression was priceless. With one risen eye brow he looked at her, and an anxious, intense fire flickered in his eyes. The muscled in his jaw tightened for a short moment before he had himself under control again. "Enlighten me, Miss Adler." "Your observations were all correct. But the conclusion, the connections you were drawing, are wrong." Sherlock cleared his throat. Obviously he felt uncomfortable in this situation, and Irene was sure that none of his hypotheses had been wrong. Well, till now.

"Let's bring light into the dark. I do not trust in being indiscoverable. I trust _you_ because I know that you would be able to protect me if someone would find me. This is the reason why I let my shields down, how you said it." "That's exactly what I said" he replied dry, but there was a quiet - and however clearly audible - doubt in his voice. Irene ran her fingers through her hair, and she didn't fail to notice that Sherlock's attentive view immediately wandered to her fingers.

"My hands were trembling when I applied the lipstick because I was nervous. My hands are trembling now because I still am. I drank my water so fast because my mouth was dry. I haven't talked much because I wasn't sure what to say...Because I was too happy." "Too happy?" "Obviously. I thought that you were dead, but you aren't. I'm...glad about it." Glad surely wasn't the word that she was looking for, but her head seemed empty, so she couldn't find the word that could describe the storm inside of her. He nodded shortly and signalised her that she could continue talking.

"And lastly the thing about talking like someone else. You're at least partly right with this, but you're drawing the wrong conclusions again. It is no sympathy, not even a considerable one. It is surely too early to call it love...I don't know a word that would suit."

With a frowned forehead she looked him in the eye. He was completely fascinated of what she said, but with the same certainty she could see that he hadn't got the slightest idea what her point was. She had wanted to avoid that she needed to become so direct, but she should have known that even Sherlock Holmes - probably him of him all people; he obviously had no experience on this territory - didn't know what she meant. "Sherlock" she started off lowly and carefully, "who does still say obvious?" "Well, me." With a short glance that said much Irene leaned back. Her hands were still trembling when she clenched them in her napkin. Now she could only wait for Sherlock to draw the right conclusions.


	3. Chapter 3

After a few seconds his face lightened up, before his eyes suddenly met hers again. He seemed almost shocked.

"That's...impossible."

"A clever man once said that the illogical, seemingly impossible solution of a problem has to be the right one when you eliminate all logicial solutions." He looked a bit surprised when he recognized his own words.

"I'm listening, Sherlock. I'm always listening to you" she explained while she stared at her hands. She wouldn't bear to look at Sherlock.

“Miss Adler, I...”

“I know. I know, Sherlock. You’re not like…the others.“

„Miss Adler…“

„which is good. But you’re probably just incapable of feeling or thinking this way. Perhaps it was dumb of me to start the talk. I’m sorry, I was just...”

“Irene.” When he called her first name she looked up surprised and let go off her crinkled napkin. Sherlock had leaned over the table towards her and looked at her with a sparkle in his eyes which she had never seen of him before. His sudden closeness irritated her just as much as the expression in his glance.

“Allow me to finish my sentence only once.”

Unable to speak she nodded and felt as if she was hypnotised. The glance of his light eyes, which were as clear as ice, was so intense that Irene believed he would look right inside her...which Sherlock probably did. If there was someone who could actually read thoughts, it was Sherlock.

“I’m not really fond of feelings. You’re right with this. But you were also right when you said that I wasn’t like the others. So we're similar. You’re also not as boring and monotonous as the others. I have to confess that you’re a riddle to me, and although I’m looking at you and I see something _in_ you very prominently, I’m not sure whether it’s true.” He leaned back again, and was too far away again. Irene sighed frustrated.

“You probably don’t understand this, but it is torture for me to be unable to decode something another person reveals involuntarily.” He hesitated for a short moment before he took her hand carefully and ran his thumb over the tender skin of the back of her hand. Then he pulled Irene’s hand to his lips in a fluent, elegant motion and kissed her knuckled while his lids dropped a little. The shadows of his lashes were drawing dark semi-circles on his sharp cheek bones.

It was a touch that was barely worth the name, because he didn’t actually touch her. His lips seemed to hover only a millimetre over her skin before she felt the warmth on her knuckles and smiled involuntarily while a cosy shiver ran over her body.

Almost immediately Irene felt how the blood rushed up to her cheeks. Sherlock laughed lowly. It was a noise she had heard only a few times before. When she felt a touch on the side of her face, she couldn’t resist: She snuggled up against Sherlock’s palm like against a warm blanket and looked at him under half-closed lids.

“A fascinating reaction. So...real.”

“What are you trying to say?“ she whispered. She had forgotten everything around them long ago, and a train would have needed to be derailed and to crush in the wall next to them to wake Irene from this very appealing trance.

“Maybe I’m not as different as you believe. Not completely.” The talks on the tables next to them had stopped; at least Irene didn’t take notice of them any longer. The low jazz music had become softer and softer until it was inaudible. Everything that was seizable for her, everything that she heard and felt, was Sherlock. Her eyes widened a little, almost too little to notice, but she knew that he had recognized. With an attentive and torturing slowness Sherlock again leaned over the table, but now Irene met him halfway.

“Sherlock” she whispered, and they were so close that she could feel his slow, controlled breath on her skin.

“Don’t” he replied just as softly.

There was nothing left, nothing apart them, not even the things that happened around them.

There was no John Watson, no police, no people that wanted Irene dead because of circumstances she hated, no Moriarty, not even their past was still existing.

This moment was isolated from every incident that had ever happened; it was absolutely and completely lonely.

It was perfect.


	4. Chapter 4

Sherlock’s lips brushed hers, only short, for a far too short moment, as if he was making a first try. The thought wasn’t even this absurd. It was as if he tried to weigh the facts logically the same way he usually did. He wanted to do something he was good at, something he felt safe and superior with.

Irene upset his plans. Now that she had him so far that he actually showed his feelings for once – which were hiding somewhere inside of him, she couldn’t and wouldn’t be satisfied with such a careful caress. She pulled him closer towards her, noticed with a short dropout of her heartbeat that his hands were wandering to her neck and he...relaxed.

All strain in his body, everything that Irene would see as enforced, had vanished. She could feel the muscles in his shoulders when she put her hands on them light as a feather, but it felt like the body of a totally normal man. Sherlock Holmes really seemed relaxed when Irene drew back from him. “Let’s go” she whispered and followed the line of his distinctive face with her thumb with very soft movements. “There’s nothing I’d rather do.”

They left a proper tip and left the restaurant. In spite of everything that had happened inside Sherlock was still serious, quiet and polite in a cold way. He helped her into her coat without a single word, held the door for her and waited until she had opened her umbrella. Only when Irene was protected from the light rain, which seemed to belong to London, he took her hand. It was an everyday touch that shouldn’t have as much impact on Irene as it actually did.

He looked at her from the side in an almost shy way when she looked up to him surprised, but the smile that he wore on his lips also showed in his eyes. Suddenly he started to move, didn’t wait for her to see if she would follow, he just assumed it, and pulled them away from the restaurant. They went through narrow alleys that probably didn’t look too trustworthy at daytime. But Irene didn’t care, because she knew that she was safe.

No matter how crazy Sherlock might seem, no matter how crazy he _really was_ , Irene was safe with him. She squeezed his hand softly. His hair had curled much more because of the rain and hung a little messy in his forehead. Without a single thought about her own hair or her looks, without thinking anything at all she lowered her arm so the rain hit her, too. She felt how the handle of her umbrella slid through her fingers, while her gaze couldn’t part from Sherlock. With now steadier fingers she brushed his damp hair out of his face and was astonished how it felt under her touch.

“Irene...You will get a cold.” She couldn’t resist, she had to laugh. „What’s wrong?“ Sherlock asked, obviously puzzled by her reaction. „It‘s just…“ she started and searched for a spot in his face that didn’t distract her from what she wanted to say, but she didn’t manage.

Just looking at him, watching his face – the clear, knowing eyes, the sensual curve of his lips, the way how his dark hair seemed to fight against the rain, his eyelashes, where raindrops had collected that now rolled down his cheeks like tears – created chaos in her mind.

When their lips met again the kiss had nothing in common with the one they had in the restaurant. This one was breathless, longing, even if Sherlock was a little...distanced at first. Irene had not known that you could kiss someone distanced. Sherlock could.

After a few seconds – which vanished very fast – Sherlock started to transform. Irene felt how he released her hand from his soft grip and buried his fingers in her dark blonde hair instead.  He pulled the bobby pins that Irene had placed with so much exaggerated care out of her hair with soft motions. Each one of them dropped with a clear jingle. Her now untamed hair fell down her back as Sherlock’s searching hands slid over her shoulders, followed her spine and finally stopped at her waist.

The impossibility to pull her even closer didn’t hinder him to almost lift her from the ground as he snuggled her firmly and strangely uncontrolled. Irene damned the idea to have chosen High Heels, because on the irregular and bumpy rubble pavement even a trained woman like her had no chance of walking with real grace.

Without breaking the kiss or taking her hands – that had crept under Sherlock’s coat almost by themselves and now rested on his slim hips – off his body she slipped out of her shoes, first the right, then the left one.

Although they had been sinfully expensive Irene pushed her shoes aside without a second thought and had to stand on her tiptoes to be as close to Sherlock as possible.

“Irene” he whispered breathless against her lips, and she enjoyed this closeness, this absolute familiarity they shared, before she buried her head at his neck, letting her lips glide over the sensitive spot below his ear and tickling his cheek with her damp hair.

“I...don’t know what to say.”

“Then don’t say anything” she murmured and tried to get him caught in another kiss. For a very sweet moment Sherlock gave in and let his lips conquer by her, before he pushed her off a bit.

“Please. Let’s go somewhere. Inside.“

„What?“ she asked with blatant amusement in her voice. It was just so _Sherlock_.

„I betrayed all my principles. When I allow that you get sick…Then this evening is a catastrophe on a psychological plain.”

“I understand. Then we should avoid getting you into a moral conflict.“ A last time Sherlock allowed Irene to pull him down to her before he sighed.

“It would be so much easier to keep an eye on my principles if I only could think clearly.”

“I fear this is not an option right now.” With a noise that was somewhere between a desperate sigh and a low, irresistible laugh he picked up the umbrella and held it over both of them while Irene put her shoes back on and took the arm he offered her.


	5. Chapter 5

“Does John know by now?”

She knew that she didn’t need to explain it further.

Sherlock shook his head. “No. He has no idea.“

„Why didn’t you tell him?“

“He could get into trouble.”

“He’s your best friend.”

“He’s my only friend.” She was fully aware that this bitterness rooted deeply, although he never showed it, and she decided to let the topic rest.

He didn’t let go off her hand, not even when he opened the door to his flat. A little bit careless he put Irene’s umbrella in the corner of the corridor and turned towards her again.

“I’m getting you a towel.” Irene looked down on her and nodded. She was dripping wet down to the bone, and the numb cold oozed deep into her body. While she unbuttoned her coat she slipped off her probably ruined shoes. In the heat of the battle she had pushed them into a puddle. She took Sherlock’s small towel thankfully and wrung her hair out. Still she was a stranger to herself, and Irene wondered whether she could ever live normal again. She smiled at him timidly when she felt his gaze on her and took a step towards him.

Before she could get too close he reached out a hand and wiped something under her eye away very carefully. Probably her whole make-up was smudged, and she looked awful, she was almost sure about that, but Sherlock didn’t seem to care. When she put his arms around his waist and leaned her head against his chest his replied hug was a security, a protection for tonight. With a low sigh she snuggled up against him and enjoyed his closeness before she took a small step back.

“Could you maybe...borrow me something to put on?” She felt a little uncomfortable asking, but at the same time she knew that she didn’t need to have doubts. Sherlock nodded wordlessly, turned around and disappeared behind a door. Obviously he expected her to follow him, so she did.

The bed room was small, a little smaller than the bed room in Baker Street, and it was furnished rather lovelessly. With the few pieces of furniture and the simple curtains the room seemed very antiseptic. It suited Sherlock, but there was something missing. Only John had made it a home, and the way Sherlock looked at her when he gave her a shirt and something that looked like a trunks, told her very obviously that he missed him. Without hesitating Irene started to undress.

"Could you maybe open the zipper for me?" Sherlock shrugged his shoulders and waited until she turned around. With the back towards him Irene waited only a split second before she felt his touch at her neck. While he opened her zipper with the one hand his other hand slid over her back down to her waist. He stayed there for a short moment bevfore he took a step back. Irene deplored it, she hadn't known a better place for his hands than on her body.

Lost in her thoughts she stepped out of her dress and felt Sherlock'd gaze on her as she turned around. She didn't feel uncomfortable, which had several reasons. First: She was a self-confident woman who didn't despise her body as many others might do. Second: She knew that Sherlock Holmes had seen her much more naked before. Third: It was Sherlock Holmes. Standing in front of him just in her underwear was something completely different. It was like standing in front of a wall.

"You've put on weight." Well, a really clever wall.

"Pardon?" she asked.

"Your measurements are different. When we met the last time your waist was at approximately 61 centimetres. Now the measure is 63 centimetres."

Every other woman would fall in deep desperation when a man told her that she put on weight. Irene didn't. She smiled.

"You're a real exceptional man, Sherlock Holmes. I knew there was no one apart from you that would take my measurements when he sees me in underwear. I could almost be offended" she added with a wink.

"I surely didn't want to affront you, Irene. Although my experience on this area is rather limited I can say that you are a really attractive woman." From Sherlock's lips these words sounded like a triple accolade.

While Irene put on the shirt she already pushed him against the corner of the bed softly so he finally sat on the mattress and looked up to her.

"Irene..."

"What?" she murmured while she sat down on his lap and wound her legs around his hips.

"I'm...not really experienced in what..." She smiled lightly and looked at him with a loving expression in her eyes.

"Sherlock, everything is like I'd want it to be. It's just perfect."

"Really?" he asked doubtingly.

"Obviously" she replied. His low laugh drowned in her kiss. Without real resistance he let her push him back on to the sheets and replied her passionate kiss with a...fire that Irene wouldn't have expected in him.

But still waters ran deep. And if this saying was really true then Irene would probably have to face some more surprises. But she didn't want to concentrate on a soon or later. There was only now.


	6. Chapter 6

She felt his racing pulse just like the warmth of his skin beneath her fingertips strongly while she stroked his neck. However, his face was ice cold when she broke the kiss shortly to push a resisting, wet streak of hair of his eyes.

“Aren’t you afraid of getting sick?” she asked lowly and with a frowned forehead.

“Whatever awaits me, it is impossible that it is stranger than what is storming inside of me right now.” Irene knew that this sentence was the pitch of romance she could expect from Sherlock. To be honest, it calmed her. It would have depressed her a lot if he had been gifted above-average in regard to this too. Smiling he replied his gaze and pulled her down to him shortly before he released her lips again and glared at her elfishly.

“And you really thought I wouldn’t come.”

“I was wrong with that. But it seemed to…improbable to me.“

„Why so?“

„Well, I already knew you. That means…“

„What, Irene?“ he insisted softly but certainly.

„I had thought that I knew you. But I never met anyone before who was quite like you.”

“Is this a compliment?”

“I think so, yes. It’s just…I have a certain effect on men – and women – how you might have already noticed. And with you it was different. Just think about our first meeting. Everybody else…But you…“

She grinned at the sole memory of it. Just Sherlock Holmes could ever get the idea to take her measurements when she stood in front of him. In her battle dress. From that moment on she had had two feelings, fighting each other: First, admiration for his mind and his intellect. Second, complete blankness and great…disappointment. She was really disappointed of herself because she couldn’t have him.

Now she had him, but it didn’t fill her with grim, triumphant joy. The warmth that spread in her when she looked at her was based on a feeling she feared much more. Her experience told her to lock everything away, to ignore everything what was there, what was impossible to ignore. But this time she wouldn’t do it. Because this was something else. This was Sherlock.

“Irene, you beat me. You were the only woman who ever beat me.“

Tenderly and lost in her thoughts she let her index finger trail over his left cheekbone, right over the spot where he had had a wound when they met for the first time. Not even a scar was left, as if it had never happened. As if there had never been anything expect this moment. It was a very pleasant imagination.

“This makes you exceedingly unique.“

„Then this matter would be clear, too“ she whispered, more to her than to him. She remembered the talk with John Watson only too well, the cold in her body and the burning in her heart. Just the thought, that Sherlock Holmes, the detective she adored so much, think of her as unique…Back then it had almost seemed impossible to her.

“Not important” she said hastily as she felt Sherlock’s asking gaze on her. She didn’t want to spend the evening talking about John or just thinking about him. There was so much more to do, so much more beautiful things. A tiny shiver ran over her when she felt Sherlock’s hands under the shirt she had pulled over but not buttoned. Her red bra which was covered in lace, shone in the soft light of the bedside lamp, but Sherlock had only shortly glanced at it, if at all. He looked her in the eye all the time, let his gaze grope over her face and analysed every single one of her movements. Carefully he fondled her back and followed the spine down to her hips.

The light in his eyes danced, and although Irene was now so close to him that she could have counted every single one of his dark eye lashes it was impossible for her to say what eye colour he really had. The gold around his pupils flashed when their eyes met. When Irene felt how his hands strengthened their grip on her skin for a short moment she shivered again.

“I told you you’d get sick” he criticised her with a challenging blink in his eye.

“Do I really need to explain why I shivered?”

“No, I can almost guess. Although it would interest me to hear an explanation.”

„Oh, be quiet, you lunatic“ she burst out laughing and kissed him passionately.

"Sociopath” Sherlock mumbled quiet and indistinct.

If he hadn’t have quite clever things to say most of the time Irene would have loved to forbid him to speak. In the end Sherlock knew how to keep himself busy without any words. And not even in a bad way. To be honest he was very good. Irene could feel how her pulse rushed, and heard the prominent pound of her heart beat in her ears, almost as clear as the low sigh that escaped her throat when Sherlock replied the kiss.

Their bodies were so close now that you could mistake them for a single one. She felt the tremble in his abdominal muscles while she began to pull the shirt out of his trousers and to draw tender patterns on the smooth skin. By now his body was all warm again as Irene stopped shortly to take a deep breath and leaned her forehead against his before she starts to cover his face in feathery kisses. Her lips caressed his cheeks, the straight line of his nose, wandered to the corners of his mouth before finding Sherlock’s lips again.

Still his big hand were lying on her body before he let them travel back up again, to her shoulder blades. His touch was soft, but it also showed Irene clearly that it was hard for him to show restrain.

He let his lips glide over hers, followed the aorta on the side of her neck and kissed the skin over her collarbone so carefully as if he really feared that she’d break. When he turned them to the side so she was laying half next to him and half under him Irene had to stop him short, though she pitied it a lot. Stars danced in front of her eyes when she opened her eyes again, and she had to blink several times before she could see clearly again. Sherlock’s gaze was confused, but focused when she put both of her hands on his chest – feeling his racing heart beat below her fingertips – and pushed him off a bit.


	7. Chapter 7

“Sherlock, please don’t me wrong, I want you more than anything else…But I can’t sleep with you. Not tonight.”

His confused-terrified expression told her very clearly that he hadn’t thought about this in his wildest imaginations. In a very chivalric way Sherlock was utterly innocent and naive when it came to these things.

“I just want to be next to you and be safe. I want to sleep again.”

“You couldn’t sleep?” Now he really seemed concerned, and his forehead showed wrinkles before Irene smoothed them carefully with her thumb.

“Sherlock, I feared that you’d get into trouble because of me. I was so scared that someone would recognize me on the street and make you responsible for it. I never was scared about anyone, but then I was. I was scared to bear guilt.” Desperately she looked at him. While she talked his gaze seemed to get darker and even less revealing, until she could see herself in his eyes, a twisted, anxious version of her.

“But you don’t. You don’t bear any guilt” he assured her with a strong voice.

“I know that now. But starting everyday with believing that something about you would be on the front page, a headline with a bad pun below your photo...I was scared, Sherlock. And when I read it and it all made so much sense...I didn’t want to believe it, I couldn’t, because it didn’t fit you. It wasn’t you. I always believed in you, Sherlock. Always. But the thought that you’re gone…“

Her voice had gotten quieter and weaker before she finally broke and Irene ripped her gaze out of Sherlock’s. The tears weren’t yet burning in her eyes, but if she’d look at him longer, with the fear that he could just vanish....She couldn’t bear it. Sherlock rested his head next to her on the pillows and put a hand to her cheek.

“But I am here. I am with you now.” A tiny smile chased over her trembling lips.

“When did you learn to be so damn poetic?” she mumbled.

“You can still learn when you’re already dead. Come here.” He pulled her close, let his hands glide under the shirt she wore and flung his arms around her waist. Irene’s lids closed as she replied his embrace and buried her face at his face. Here she was safe. Here she was wanted. Here she was…Irene. Not the dominatrix, not the player. Just Irene. Did that what she was with Sherlock have a name? And did she have to label what she felt? Was it important how it was called when she knew how it felt? How _right_ it felt? Probably not. Probably it was enough to know it was there.

For a short moment there was nothing except them and theit touch until Sherlock wriggled himself out of the embrace hesitatingly.

“Just give me a minute, I’ll be right back.” He kissed her mouth shortly before standing up and unbuttoning his shirt. With an amused facial expression Irene watched how Sherlock folded it very neatly, putting it down on the small table, before he took off his trousers and socks too. His light skin was shimmering in the low light when he climbed back into bed. The night was quite cool so they both slipped under the soft duvet. Without a moment of hesitation Sherlock pulled Irene close again.

“There’s no need to be afraid” he whispered, his voice still cool, neutral, but softer than before.

“No. Not anymore.” Lovingly she ran her fingers his chest and looked up at him. His face was enlightened with joy and tenderness as he put a hand below her chin and carefully pulled her towards him to lay his lips on hers. Slowly he deepened the kiss, caressed her skin with his hands, while she tenderly pulled her fingernails over his back, which stole a pleasant shiver from him. Passion took over again until they were both breathless and backed off from each other rather unwillingly.

“I am here, Irene. I’ll look after you.”

When Sherlock turned off the light of his bedside lamp Irene closed her eyes and snuggled up against him even closer. With her head at his shoulder and her hands on his skin she fell into a deep, calm sleep.


End file.
